Post by Deleted on Nov 18, 2007 21:00:35 GMT -5
Done writing today. Chatper Eighteen, the third chapter churned out on this amazingly productive day of 11.5k words.
Pessimism. Even the word sounds bad. I always thought that pessimism and optimism were really relative. Like, most people fell in the middle somewhere, on some days feeling especially optimistic, and on others pretty pessimistic. But it wasn’t like that. I was really wrong about the world, now that I thought about it, because if you think the majority of people “fall somewhere in the middle” you are quite wrong my friend.
Most people are pessimists.
I don’t know how I didn’t realize it before. I mean, we’ve got all of these people in the world who don’t look at the world like an optimist does. Most people think that pessimism is really extreme, like, oh my God I’m going to die today, but it’s really not like that. It’s more…it’s more of a way of looking at things. It’s more of thinking that you’re going to be late. It’s more of complaining about how it’s going to take two hours to get to Boston. It’s more of looking at someone and thinking they’re weird because they died their hair green. Pessimism is part of the American culture, developed in by all of those people who think they can’t. And it’s not just thinking you can’t. The fact is, most people know they can walk. That’s not it. It’s thinking you can’t do something, won’t like something, or will do something bad, before you even do it. Or, it’s complaining about it along the way.
Optimism, however, is a whole different story. I have yet to see a true optimist, one who never complains, or actually looks at life on the bright side. But the fact is, half of optimism is actually trying to be optimistic. It is saying to yourself, you know what, I’m not going to be five minutes late, I’m just going to get there five minutes after the appointed time. And it’s not just taking the shortest journey to your destination, it’s all about having fun along the way.
People claim to be optimistic. But there is only one way you could possibly be an optimist. And, even then, I would doubt you are.
Maybe when you’re, like, one year old. But other than that, you’ve got a little pessimism in you. There’s nothing anyone can do about it, except for trying to fight it, trying not to let it get to you.
I remembered all of those days I was having fun, and yet, I was a pessimist. I was a pessimist. I didn’t look at a test as a way to test the abilities I so fortunately learned, I looked at a test as a hindrance, the reason I was wasting my precious time to study stupid math problems.
And yet, optimism.
Optimism.
Whenever I think of optimism, for some odd reason, I think of the sun. Pessimism doesn’t even bring about an image, but there, in optimism, there is the sun. Will I ever know why I associate happiness with the sun? With light? I won’t ever know. But what I will know, is, that day, that day I talked to Tyson, and he totally proved my theory wrong, I looked at life a whole new way. I was no longer a pessimist. I was a wannabe optimist.
And, as I said before, half of being an optimist is wanting to be one. So, wow, lucky me, I was already halfway there.
But all that didn’t matter. I knew that it all started from there. As soon as Tyson and I had mended our friendship, everything was going to start getting better, lifting itself from there. It didn’t matter. I had someone on my side, a friend to watch my back. And it didn’t matter who was going to try and put me down, because he would always be there to pick me up. And as soon as that tension lifted, the tension between everyone else would lift. Eventually, over time, I would slowly glue together the bonds between Kara and Ally and I, and we would be friends again. We would all be friends again. There would be the four of us, in the sky, just flying, nothing to worry about.
But then there was Dave. It was really weird. I was noticing a lot more around the school than normal. Instead of just walking with my friends (well, actually, it was just Tyson now) in the hall, I would notice him kind of close by, hanging out at his locker or walking the same way as us. I’m sure it was just me being that paranoid self that I am, but it was kind of creepy. All of a sudden I was noticing him, and he was actually standing up for me on the bus. I didn’t get it. It was almost like he was…I don’t know, trying to get noticed by me. Or was it by Tyson?
Tyson, who was actually crushing on Dave at the time, didn’t seem to mind. He was happy that wherever he went he would just notice Dave out of the corner of his eye. And yet, he didn’t ever talk about that. Like he said in the Mole’s Hideout, that kind of stuff was strictly private with him, and he would try to avoid it at all costs. I was glad that I was finally over that horrible case of homophobia I had. After all, there were bound to be gay people all over the place, but, as long as they were nice, I didn’t really care. It didn’t matter. As long as their personality was a good one, they were good people in my book.
Still, when I look back at how I was thinking back then, man, what an idiot I was! Thinking that all gay people were child molesters when they grow up. I mean, what kind of weirdo started that rumor anyway? I guess it was someone who, like most people, hated those who were gay, made up crazy things about them. Though I’m not entirely sure, maybe people did that with blacks during the Civil Rights Movement. I mean, it seems entirely possible, more like probable, that things were like that. Like Tyson said to me, humans like to exclude people to feel accepted. It’s just the way they are.
That was the day I had such an interesting English class.
In English, we were studying non-fiction. In doing this, we received articles from this strange, offbeat magazine, and we would have to respond to them. Most of the articles were about prejudice, which kind of surprised me in becoming a growing trend. But then I kind of got used to it. Little did I know, this was going to become very important.
For the lesson we were on, we had to print out an article of our own, and respond to it. I had printed out an article about the test you have to take to become an American citizen, one which most Americans themselves are unable to pass, but there was another kid who printed out a different article.
Her name was Ginz, and she was Spanish. When called on to describe her article, she seemed a bit determined to get a point across. I wondered what horrors were contained in her article. “Well, my article was about an article. In a magazine in Atlanta, they did an article on the 100 most influential Americans. Seems pretty good right, you know, going around and deciding who was all influential and whatnot. But the problem was, the list was extremely biased. Most of them were white Protestant men, and there were only 10 women, and 8 blacks. The worst part is, there were no Hispanics! I was really surprised when I read it, and I got really angry.” She seemed pretty involved in the article, kind of mad about it, to tell you the truth. I thought she would know better though.
Another kid named Craig was called on. “I can see your concern, and, yeah, I do get kind of angry at that kind of stuff, but why are you surprised?”
His response kind of struck me as odd. I mean, she was surprised because that’s horrible, how most of the list of the 100 most influential Americans was white Protestant men, and yet there were so many influential Americans who were Catholic and Jewish, black and Hispanic, women. I didn’t understand how he was not taken aback, almost.
“What? I mean, I was surprised because that’s really racist. That’s really racist, so I’ll ask you, why are you not surprised?” Ginz retorted, kind of angry that Craig apparently didn’t even care about it.
“I’m not surprised because prejudice has been going on forever. I mean, no offense to any black people in this room, you’re all very nice people, but when you see a big person, and he’s black, are you a little scared of him? Raise your hands if you are.” Craig raised his hand as he said this, admitting to the fact that this is true.
I knew everyone in that room, aside for those who were black, should have raised their hands. A few unsure hands rose up into the air, but for the most part, people’s hands stayed down. They didn’t want to admit their natural prejudice. But we were brought up that way. “Don’t be ashamed,” Craig said, “it’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s the way we grew up. Prejudice is not about getting that feeling, it’s about fighting it.” A few more hands went up into the air, but most of them stayed down still. It didn’t matter though. We all knew what he was getting at.
I raised my hand.
“I agree with Craig. I mean, there’s been prejudice for a really long time. There’s prejudice going on right now, probably in this town,” I argued, wanting to show people that prejudice was wrong.
“No there isn’t,” a girl named Elizabeth countered, apparently angry that I had accused our town of such an offense. “Do you see any lynches or anything, hanging of black people? Our government doesn’t have any laws against black people or anything, against any type of religion. Everyone has a right to do, for the most part, whatever they want, and even so, if you aren’t allowed to do something, all races aren’t allowed to do it, in all fairness.”
“Oh yeah? What about getting married?” Craig asked, seeing at what I was trying to get at. He caught on pretty quickly.
“Yeah, getting married as well. Everyone can get married, even interracially and people of two religions. So yeah, marriage is a freedom and a right in this country.”
“What about gay people?”
The class went silent at the mention of gay people. Instead of doing what they were doing, doodling or whispering, they all looked over at me, who said it, and then at Elizabeth, who was stifled. She couldn’t argue. “That’s…that’s…that’s different,” she argued weakly, trying to come up with something, racing through her mind, just trying to figure something out.
“Is it?”
The bell rang.
Craig taught me something, and Ginz. Prejudice will always exist, has always existed in our country.
I thought about it. I mean, I never really considered the fact before. I had always watched people be prejudiced, prejudice, do all of that stuff, that stuff we were talking about it, but I considered it normal. It was just the way things went. Fat people were fat, end of story. Gay people were gay, end of story. There was nothing we could do about it, and yet we felt superior to these people, even if we weren’t. Even if we weren’t we needed to feel superior to someone, just for the sake of it, just to make us feel a little better than normal. And yet, it should have made us feel worse, how we treated people like that, how we totally crushed them with our verbal assaults like that. And now I felt good, knowing that I was on top of that, that I would try not to be prejudiced, that I would try and see life in a new light. That made me feel really good, like songs that kind of make you happy. I can just think of them now, the ones you just want to get up and dance to, sing to, with those you love, just because they’re so happy. It’s surreal, and yet, we all need to feel it. In a world of pessimism, optimism, though rare, is something that humans need a refresher course on every so often. And, optimists are not those who oversee everything. They know there are things that are bad, they just have to realize that there’s a little good in everything that happens. Even if we can’t see it ourselves.
And then, I thought about it more, how Ginz was even surprised by the amount of prejudice in the country. She shouldn’t have been, especially because she was Mexican-American. Did she ever get dirty looks from someone before, or did she not notice in her childlike innocence? Was she ever the butt of racist jokes about Mexican? Was she ever asked if she was an illegal immigrant? These were things I wondered as I went through the day. How could she have possibly been surprised, anyone? Do we try to hide our faults like that, so that we are surprised when they resurfaced. An important part of our faults is that we have to acknowledge they are there. There is no one without fault, we are all taught that, because we are not perfect. So why does no one strive to find their faults? Shouldn’t it be obvious that, to overpass our faults, or make an attempt to, we have to know what they are first? Or do some people simply believe that they are faultless, limitless? Faultless and limitless are two different things. Faultless means that something is perfect. But, I think, perfection is not something that we are, that something is. Perfection is something that we feel. Perfection is that succulent strawberry on a sunny summer afternoon. Perfection is that final bead on that necklace you’ve been working so hard on for a couple of hours. Perfection is a cozy winter night by the fire, with your family, watching the Super Bowl. Perfection isn’t something we are or have, it is something we feel. Why doesn’t anyone realize that? Doesn’t anyone feel that perfection in the air when they see that snow slowly falling on Monday morning? Doesn’t anyone feel the perfection soaking in through their skin when they turn around just in time to see a shooting star shoot past? Is it something that we ignore, in turn with our faults? Or is it something that we all secretly cherish, a piece to the heart and a piece to the soul? Just from one article, so many ideas can rush through the mind, the brain, and there it is, prejudice to perfection.
Perfect.
It was perfect.
I don’t know, but as I was thinking about it, there was a perfect moment. Tyson and I were walking down the hall, obviously thinking pensively because there were lines of concentration etched upon our faces, and then Tyson all of a sudden stops and slams into one of the lockers to the side of him, and there’s Tyson and someone else (I could only see the back of his head) in the hallway, recently collided. Books are scattered about the floor.
Tyson, being the helpful person he was, immediately bent down to help whoever it was that he accidentally walked into. I hovered over for a little bit, waiting because instinct told me to, and then I saw it.
Their eyes met.
And there was this spark.
It was unexplainable, but there was this moment when they saw each other, and I could see their eyes meet, and there was absolutely no way I was going to keep from smiling. It was perfect, that moment of perfection, that just makes you turn around, walk away, shake your head and breathe in happy disbelief at what you have just done, seen, felt, heard. I almost laughed, cried, sang out and danced, jumped around and screamed because it was so perfect, such a perfect air and such perfect timing that I couldn’t believe.
“Sorry,” Tyson said, and as we turned around and went our separate ways, I could see Tyson with his huge doofus-like grin, and I could feel my cheeks redden and my face light up.
But of course, I don’t have to tell you who we saw in the hallway, who caused all that bliss, that perfect moment. Why would I even reveal it to you, because he was there, because that was one of the few perfect moments, one of the only ones I had felt in a long time?
I don’t have to tell you because you already know.
Most people are pessimists.
I don’t know how I didn’t realize it before. I mean, we’ve got all of these people in the world who don’t look at the world like an optimist does. Most people think that pessimism is really extreme, like, oh my God I’m going to die today, but it’s really not like that. It’s more…it’s more of a way of looking at things. It’s more of thinking that you’re going to be late. It’s more of complaining about how it’s going to take two hours to get to Boston. It’s more of looking at someone and thinking they’re weird because they died their hair green. Pessimism is part of the American culture, developed in by all of those people who think they can’t. And it’s not just thinking you can’t. The fact is, most people know they can walk. That’s not it. It’s thinking you can’t do something, won’t like something, or will do something bad, before you even do it. Or, it’s complaining about it along the way.
Optimism, however, is a whole different story. I have yet to see a true optimist, one who never complains, or actually looks at life on the bright side. But the fact is, half of optimism is actually trying to be optimistic. It is saying to yourself, you know what, I’m not going to be five minutes late, I’m just going to get there five minutes after the appointed time. And it’s not just taking the shortest journey to your destination, it’s all about having fun along the way.
People claim to be optimistic. But there is only one way you could possibly be an optimist. And, even then, I would doubt you are.
Maybe when you’re, like, one year old. But other than that, you’ve got a little pessimism in you. There’s nothing anyone can do about it, except for trying to fight it, trying not to let it get to you.
I remembered all of those days I was having fun, and yet, I was a pessimist. I was a pessimist. I didn’t look at a test as a way to test the abilities I so fortunately learned, I looked at a test as a hindrance, the reason I was wasting my precious time to study stupid math problems.
And yet, optimism.
Optimism.
Whenever I think of optimism, for some odd reason, I think of the sun. Pessimism doesn’t even bring about an image, but there, in optimism, there is the sun. Will I ever know why I associate happiness with the sun? With light? I won’t ever know. But what I will know, is, that day, that day I talked to Tyson, and he totally proved my theory wrong, I looked at life a whole new way. I was no longer a pessimist. I was a wannabe optimist.
And, as I said before, half of being an optimist is wanting to be one. So, wow, lucky me, I was already halfway there.
But all that didn’t matter. I knew that it all started from there. As soon as Tyson and I had mended our friendship, everything was going to start getting better, lifting itself from there. It didn’t matter. I had someone on my side, a friend to watch my back. And it didn’t matter who was going to try and put me down, because he would always be there to pick me up. And as soon as that tension lifted, the tension between everyone else would lift. Eventually, over time, I would slowly glue together the bonds between Kara and Ally and I, and we would be friends again. We would all be friends again. There would be the four of us, in the sky, just flying, nothing to worry about.
But then there was Dave. It was really weird. I was noticing a lot more around the school than normal. Instead of just walking with my friends (well, actually, it was just Tyson now) in the hall, I would notice him kind of close by, hanging out at his locker or walking the same way as us. I’m sure it was just me being that paranoid self that I am, but it was kind of creepy. All of a sudden I was noticing him, and he was actually standing up for me on the bus. I didn’t get it. It was almost like he was…I don’t know, trying to get noticed by me. Or was it by Tyson?
Tyson, who was actually crushing on Dave at the time, didn’t seem to mind. He was happy that wherever he went he would just notice Dave out of the corner of his eye. And yet, he didn’t ever talk about that. Like he said in the Mole’s Hideout, that kind of stuff was strictly private with him, and he would try to avoid it at all costs. I was glad that I was finally over that horrible case of homophobia I had. After all, there were bound to be gay people all over the place, but, as long as they were nice, I didn’t really care. It didn’t matter. As long as their personality was a good one, they were good people in my book.
Still, when I look back at how I was thinking back then, man, what an idiot I was! Thinking that all gay people were child molesters when they grow up. I mean, what kind of weirdo started that rumor anyway? I guess it was someone who, like most people, hated those who were gay, made up crazy things about them. Though I’m not entirely sure, maybe people did that with blacks during the Civil Rights Movement. I mean, it seems entirely possible, more like probable, that things were like that. Like Tyson said to me, humans like to exclude people to feel accepted. It’s just the way they are.
That was the day I had such an interesting English class.
In English, we were studying non-fiction. In doing this, we received articles from this strange, offbeat magazine, and we would have to respond to them. Most of the articles were about prejudice, which kind of surprised me in becoming a growing trend. But then I kind of got used to it. Little did I know, this was going to become very important.
For the lesson we were on, we had to print out an article of our own, and respond to it. I had printed out an article about the test you have to take to become an American citizen, one which most Americans themselves are unable to pass, but there was another kid who printed out a different article.
Her name was Ginz, and she was Spanish. When called on to describe her article, she seemed a bit determined to get a point across. I wondered what horrors were contained in her article. “Well, my article was about an article. In a magazine in Atlanta, they did an article on the 100 most influential Americans. Seems pretty good right, you know, going around and deciding who was all influential and whatnot. But the problem was, the list was extremely biased. Most of them were white Protestant men, and there were only 10 women, and 8 blacks. The worst part is, there were no Hispanics! I was really surprised when I read it, and I got really angry.” She seemed pretty involved in the article, kind of mad about it, to tell you the truth. I thought she would know better though.
Another kid named Craig was called on. “I can see your concern, and, yeah, I do get kind of angry at that kind of stuff, but why are you surprised?”
His response kind of struck me as odd. I mean, she was surprised because that’s horrible, how most of the list of the 100 most influential Americans was white Protestant men, and yet there were so many influential Americans who were Catholic and Jewish, black and Hispanic, women. I didn’t understand how he was not taken aback, almost.
“What? I mean, I was surprised because that’s really racist. That’s really racist, so I’ll ask you, why are you not surprised?” Ginz retorted, kind of angry that Craig apparently didn’t even care about it.
“I’m not surprised because prejudice has been going on forever. I mean, no offense to any black people in this room, you’re all very nice people, but when you see a big person, and he’s black, are you a little scared of him? Raise your hands if you are.” Craig raised his hand as he said this, admitting to the fact that this is true.
I knew everyone in that room, aside for those who were black, should have raised their hands. A few unsure hands rose up into the air, but for the most part, people’s hands stayed down. They didn’t want to admit their natural prejudice. But we were brought up that way. “Don’t be ashamed,” Craig said, “it’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s the way we grew up. Prejudice is not about getting that feeling, it’s about fighting it.” A few more hands went up into the air, but most of them stayed down still. It didn’t matter though. We all knew what he was getting at.
I raised my hand.
“I agree with Craig. I mean, there’s been prejudice for a really long time. There’s prejudice going on right now, probably in this town,” I argued, wanting to show people that prejudice was wrong.
“No there isn’t,” a girl named Elizabeth countered, apparently angry that I had accused our town of such an offense. “Do you see any lynches or anything, hanging of black people? Our government doesn’t have any laws against black people or anything, against any type of religion. Everyone has a right to do, for the most part, whatever they want, and even so, if you aren’t allowed to do something, all races aren’t allowed to do it, in all fairness.”
“Oh yeah? What about getting married?” Craig asked, seeing at what I was trying to get at. He caught on pretty quickly.
“Yeah, getting married as well. Everyone can get married, even interracially and people of two religions. So yeah, marriage is a freedom and a right in this country.”
“What about gay people?”
The class went silent at the mention of gay people. Instead of doing what they were doing, doodling or whispering, they all looked over at me, who said it, and then at Elizabeth, who was stifled. She couldn’t argue. “That’s…that’s…that’s different,” she argued weakly, trying to come up with something, racing through her mind, just trying to figure something out.
“Is it?”
The bell rang.
Craig taught me something, and Ginz. Prejudice will always exist, has always existed in our country.
I thought about it. I mean, I never really considered the fact before. I had always watched people be prejudiced, prejudice, do all of that stuff, that stuff we were talking about it, but I considered it normal. It was just the way things went. Fat people were fat, end of story. Gay people were gay, end of story. There was nothing we could do about it, and yet we felt superior to these people, even if we weren’t. Even if we weren’t we needed to feel superior to someone, just for the sake of it, just to make us feel a little better than normal. And yet, it should have made us feel worse, how we treated people like that, how we totally crushed them with our verbal assaults like that. And now I felt good, knowing that I was on top of that, that I would try not to be prejudiced, that I would try and see life in a new light. That made me feel really good, like songs that kind of make you happy. I can just think of them now, the ones you just want to get up and dance to, sing to, with those you love, just because they’re so happy. It’s surreal, and yet, we all need to feel it. In a world of pessimism, optimism, though rare, is something that humans need a refresher course on every so often. And, optimists are not those who oversee everything. They know there are things that are bad, they just have to realize that there’s a little good in everything that happens. Even if we can’t see it ourselves.
And then, I thought about it more, how Ginz was even surprised by the amount of prejudice in the country. She shouldn’t have been, especially because she was Mexican-American. Did she ever get dirty looks from someone before, or did she not notice in her childlike innocence? Was she ever the butt of racist jokes about Mexican? Was she ever asked if she was an illegal immigrant? These were things I wondered as I went through the day. How could she have possibly been surprised, anyone? Do we try to hide our faults like that, so that we are surprised when they resurfaced. An important part of our faults is that we have to acknowledge they are there. There is no one without fault, we are all taught that, because we are not perfect. So why does no one strive to find their faults? Shouldn’t it be obvious that, to overpass our faults, or make an attempt to, we have to know what they are first? Or do some people simply believe that they are faultless, limitless? Faultless and limitless are two different things. Faultless means that something is perfect. But, I think, perfection is not something that we are, that something is. Perfection is something that we feel. Perfection is that succulent strawberry on a sunny summer afternoon. Perfection is that final bead on that necklace you’ve been working so hard on for a couple of hours. Perfection is a cozy winter night by the fire, with your family, watching the Super Bowl. Perfection isn’t something we are or have, it is something we feel. Why doesn’t anyone realize that? Doesn’t anyone feel that perfection in the air when they see that snow slowly falling on Monday morning? Doesn’t anyone feel the perfection soaking in through their skin when they turn around just in time to see a shooting star shoot past? Is it something that we ignore, in turn with our faults? Or is it something that we all secretly cherish, a piece to the heart and a piece to the soul? Just from one article, so many ideas can rush through the mind, the brain, and there it is, prejudice to perfection.
Perfect.
It was perfect.
I don’t know, but as I was thinking about it, there was a perfect moment. Tyson and I were walking down the hall, obviously thinking pensively because there were lines of concentration etched upon our faces, and then Tyson all of a sudden stops and slams into one of the lockers to the side of him, and there’s Tyson and someone else (I could only see the back of his head) in the hallway, recently collided. Books are scattered about the floor.
Tyson, being the helpful person he was, immediately bent down to help whoever it was that he accidentally walked into. I hovered over for a little bit, waiting because instinct told me to, and then I saw it.
Their eyes met.
And there was this spark.
It was unexplainable, but there was this moment when they saw each other, and I could see their eyes meet, and there was absolutely no way I was going to keep from smiling. It was perfect, that moment of perfection, that just makes you turn around, walk away, shake your head and breathe in happy disbelief at what you have just done, seen, felt, heard. I almost laughed, cried, sang out and danced, jumped around and screamed because it was so perfect, such a perfect air and such perfect timing that I couldn’t believe.
“Sorry,” Tyson said, and as we turned around and went our separate ways, I could see Tyson with his huge doofus-like grin, and I could feel my cheeks redden and my face light up.
But of course, I don’t have to tell you who we saw in the hallway, who caused all that bliss, that perfect moment. Why would I even reveal it to you, because he was there, because that was one of the few perfect moments, one of the only ones I had felt in a long time?
I don’t have to tell you because you already know.